An evocative view of the Walls by night (by Fotomagia)
Allevi asserted that the earlier construction dated back to the 12th-13th centuries.
The town map designed in 1694 by F. Fabiani from Offida, clearly proves that the town was still surrounded by boundary walls at that time. The military structure, analogous to others of the same period, was characterized by high retaining walls spaced out from square towers. To the northeast was a square tower that was the main entrance of the castle. This could be likely reached by crossing a drawbridge.
There were other entrances, one to the northwest named after S. Giovanni, the other one to the southwest named the Fontana. Little has remained of the original walls that surrounded Offida.
The 1943 earthquake brought further damages to what had remained of the original walls and later also the former retaining wall, located near the actual main tower, would be awkwardly demolished and replaced by a travertine balustrade.
Design of the walls
We certainly know that, in ancient times, the walls were surrounded, to the north side, by a moat filled with water called Carbonara, dug as a protection to the place where, according to the Statute of 1524, it was forbidden to ret flax.
The construction of the new Fortress, documented as well, dates back to the last decades of the fifteenth century and it is the same construction you can still admire today.
The construction project had been for long time attributed to Giuliano of Sangallo (1445-1516). Later studies conducted by Pietro Gianuizzi and published in the Historical Archive of Art in Rome, in 1890, however, had proved that the project had been a work of the Florentine architect Baccio Pontelli (1450-1492) - relative and mace-bearer of pope Innocenzo VIII (1432-1492) - whose coat of arms you can still admire on top of the Fortress.
The Fortress was built, as already said, at the behest of pope Innocenzo VIII, because of the repeated fights between Ascoli and Offida people.
Allevi said that Pontelli’s work was to give a circular shape to the original tower that defended the entrance of 0ffidaTerritory and to cover it with solid bricks in order to get the enemies’ bullets bounce off the walls flanks more easily.
The Fortress Tower 12th -15th centuries
The Fortress was built by the master Lucchini of Como and completed in 1494. The total cost amounted to 6.555 ducats.
In 1493 the Fortress was provided of artillery –as Allevi said – in order to make the three strongholds of the Fortress unassailable. It was Raffaele Riario (1460-1527), cardinal of S. Giorgio, on the 29th of November, 1492 that had commissioned the work to Luigi Giovanni of Milan, a blacksmith from Osimo.
According to popular belief, it seems that the artillery had been removed and used to decorate the strongholds of the Holy House of Loreto. Only later, the artillery passed on French armies, during the Napoleonic occupation.
Today, you can still admire the ancient tower that defended the entrance of Offida, a square tower and another tower, of cylindrical shape, all of the them dating from the fifteenth century.
